DEMONSTRATION PLAY SCHOOL—HETHERINGTON. 691 
education on a laboratory basis of directed play. The danger here 
is that, with the prevalent notion about “teaching,’’ the tendency will 
be to control the experimentations too strictly and to control ideals 
before there has been experience. 
To summarize, it would seem, therefore, that education will be 
efficient when we bring the resources of adults to aid the child in his 
struggle for activity, experience, and self-expression, and when adult 
leaders meet the child’s hunger for guidance with the spirit of a 
superior playfellow and with the discipline of leadership. This the 
play school proposes to do. 
2. Socran ProGRESS AND THE SCHOOL ORGANIZATION. 
(a) INDUSTRIALISM, THE HOME, AND THE PLAY AND SCHOOL CENTER. 
While the play school is primarily a product of child study, it is 
also demanded by the new educational conditions attendant upon 
social progress. No phenomenon of our civilization is more striking 
than the rise of modern industrialism, no force more potent in its 
influence on the home and child life. 
In the past the home was the center of life and experience. The 
majority of homes were not only the centers of family life, but they 
were industrial and social centers, furnishing large opportunity for 
the child to see and participate in all the essential human activities. 
The factory took from the home both the industrial occupation and 
the machinery of manufacture, with all their stimulus and opportunity 
for child activity. Hence, the function and the size of the home 
have contracted, and with the contraction the function of the home 
as a social center has declined. Entertainments are sought outside 
in commercial amusement centers, with a further contraction of 
educational stimulus in the home. Moreover, the size of the family 
has decreased, leaving children not only without generous opportu- 
nities for activity, but without even the stimulus of an adequate 
character-building companionship. In a word, modern industrialism 
has squeezed the educational juice out of the home. 
And, if we are to believe social workers, the squeezing process will 
continue. Criticism that places on parents the blame for their failure 
to supply educational needs which the home supplied a generation 
ago, misses the mark. Speaking broadly, parents are helpless. 
Even the most earnest frequently find themselves at their wits’ end 
in trying to meet the life needs of their children. The masses have 
neither training for the problem, educational resources in the home, 
nor the financial ability to meet the need at home or in private 
enterprises. 
With the continued domination of industry over our social life, 
the home will probably be less and less able to fill the educational 
needs of the child, and a greater gap between parental life and child 
